Inside One of the Busiest Maternity Wards in the World

Motherland, out now from POV, takes viewers into one of the busiest maternity wards in the world: Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in the Philippines, a country with one of the highest birthrates in the world. The women at Fabella labor, deliver, and recover from birth in communal settings — they sweat and wince with contractions in crowded delivery rooms, hunch over breastfeeding babies at opposite ends of the same bed, and talk and laugh in a room that looks larger than a high-school gym.

Have you seen Babies? In 2015, Meaghan O’Connell recommended the documentary — which “follows the first year of a baby’s life in four very different places” — to the baby-curious; I’d recommend Motherland to the same crowd, with the addition of anyone interested in the mortality aspect of child-having (maybe you’re both!). Watch an exclusive clip below, then stream the film in its entirety here.